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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29750529">Lonely with Me</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenanigans1207/pseuds/Jenanigans1207'>Jenanigans1207</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>SK8 the Infinity (Anime)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Almost Kiss, Apologies, Deleted Scene, Fix It Fic, Hurt/Comfort, I know ep 8 is already out, M/M, Reki really goes through it, boys sort of talk about their feelings, but I have too many feelings to cope with, he has a lot of feelings, in between ep 7 and 8, interrupted almost kiss, langa refuses to give up on reki, post ep 7, so please have this fic instead, soft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:34:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,948</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29750529</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenanigans1207/pseuds/Jenanigans1207</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>At this point, he’s already drenched to the bone anyways, the water sloshing in his shoes with each slowing step. His house is still a few streets away and the lamps are the only light he has to guide him there. And he should be going home, he has every reason to go home, but he finds that his feet stop moving of their own accord. He tries to breathe in the cool air of the rain, tries to feel the dampness against his cheek and think of it as refreshing. It doesn’t work.</p><p>Because the only thing he’s actually thinking about is Langa and the way he didn’t follow.</p><p>Reki walked away and Langa— Langa just let him go.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>205</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lonely with Me</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Okay so I literally just binged all 8 episodes of Sk8 today. Like I finished ep 8 like... two hours ago? And I know that ep 8 is already out, obviously, but I am a sucker for rain scenes and sad feelings and if I had started watching this last week instead, this is the fic I would've written to help heal my heart until ep 8 came out. So I decided that I want to write it anyways because these sorts of fics are my favorite!</p><p>I know that Langa waits for Reki right outside his house. Can we just pretend that he finds Reki a few streets away instead? We'll all just squint and overlook that minor detail change, right? &lt;3</p><p>I hope you guys enjoy this! It's obviously my first time writing them so I don't know how well I did capturing their voices and personalities but I think I will be writing more for them in the future!!!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It wasn’t supposed to rain today, but Reki doesn’t care.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rain patters to the ground around him, drowning out the sound of his ragged breathing, his broken heartbeats. It trickles down his back, across his face, it feels like tears. It wasn’t supposed to rain, but Reki thinks there’s some sort of ironic humor in the universe, some sort of sick joke that he has to endure as he walks away from his best friend, head bowed as his shattered heart somehow finds a way to break a little more with every step.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>At this point, he’s already drenched to the bone anyways, the water sloshing in his shoes with each slowing step. His house is still a few streets away and the lamps are the only light he has to guide him there. And he should be going home, he has every reason to go home, but he finds that his feet stop moving of their own accord. He tries to breathe in the cool air of the rain, tries to feel the dampness against his cheek and think of it as refreshing. It doesn’t work.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Because the only thing he’s actually thinking about is Langa and the way he didn’t follow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reki walked away and Langa— Langa just let him go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa, who stopped him from doing reckless things. Langa who tried to nurse him back to health when he was broken. Langa who had never let Reki get too far away, who had always reached out for him, circled back for him, sought him out in a crowd. Langa, who seemed to always hear Reki, even when he wasn’t speaking, who seemed to understand the language of Reki’s soul and managed to read between the lines. Langa, who Reki trusted more than anyone else, who Reki </span>
  <em>
    <span>needed</span>
  </em>
  <span> in his life, </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted</span>
  </em>
  <span> in his life. Langa just let him walk away like he wasn’t just one gentle breeze away from falling apart completely.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Did Langa not see the way he was hurting, not hear the barbs laced into all of his words? For all that Langa had always been good at understanding what Reki really meant, he didn’t seem able to figure it out tonight. He’d just stared wide-eyed at Reki’s back as he’d stomped away through the puddles, his feelings washing away from the space between the two of them, drowned out a little more with every raindrop that seems to punctuate their growing distance.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries not to think about it, but his head is an echo chamber, replaying his words over and over again. Replaying Langa’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>silence</span>
  </em>
  <span> on loop until it drives him absolutely insane. What he needs is to get away from it all, to get home, to lock himself in his room. Reki needs to bury his face in a pillow and block out the rest of the world, not sit outside in the rain and catch his death.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reki slumps to the ground anyways, pressing his back against the stone wall and dropping his forehead against his knees. He’d been fighting the weight of this for days, watching as Langa got further and further ahead of him. It had been a hard battle but at least then he’d been treading water, managing to somehow stay afloat despite it all. He had been able to put his fear of being left behind away and had been excited for his friend. But now— now he was drowning from it, the weight pulling him straight to the depths of the ocean with no hope of escaping. Reki may be good at skateboarding but it turns out he’s terrible at swimming and even worse at dealing with these feelings. The light of the surface is so far away now, he can’t even see it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Logic told him that he should be happy for his friend. And he </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span>, of course he was. Langa was brilliant and watching him skate was magical. It had been since the very first time Reki had seen him take on the S. Hell, it had been magical before that. From the first moment Langa stepped foot on Reki’s skateboard, only to fall flat on his back less than a second later, Reki had been enthralled. There was something about the way Langa moved on a skateboard, something about the way he made the sport his own— it was captivating, breathtaking, impossible to look away from. Everyone saw it— Snow had risen to the tip of everyone’s tongue lately, a name thrown around casually as if people knew him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But they </span>
  <em>
    <span>didn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> know him, not the way Reki did. They weren’t used to watching him practice skating, they hadn’t seen him start at the bottom. They had never seen his face as he’d hit the ground after his hundredth failed attempt at a trick, only to watch it harden back into determination as he got up to try it again. They didn’t know what his laugh sounded like, or the way he brushed his hair out of his face, they didn’t know what he looked like at the end of a long night, blinking the sleep away. They knew </span>
  <em>
    <span>Snow</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but Reki knew </span>
  <em>
    <span>Langa</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He knew the touch of Langa’s hand around his wrist as he shook his head with finality, cutting off some silly idea before Reki could even finish forming it. He knew the smile that Langa reserved only for when he nailed a new skill he’d been practicing.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew what it was like to have Langa nestled inside of his chest, right up against his heart. He was the only person Langa read like an open book, the only one Langa protected. Reki still remembered the look on Langa’s face after his beef with Adam, the way Langa’s expression had switched from worry to fury in such a quick second that Reki would’ve missed it if he’d blinked. He knew Langa as well as he knew himself because Langa was his best friend, his most important person. Langa was the person he shared his passion with, the one who listened to him as he rattled on and on about everything skating related. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa was the one he had left behind in the rain. The one who’d done nothing but watch him go.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>God. This wasn’t supposed to hurt so </span>
  <em>
    <span>bad</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The worst part was that there was nobody to blame. He couldn’t possibly be mad at Langa for being a genius— it wasn’t like Langa had chosen that. It wasn’t even like Langa had purposely wielded it against him. All Langa had been doing this time was having fun, that was clear in the look in his eyes every time he stepped onto his board. He’d been finding his place in this new world that he was suddenly thrust into, finding a way to express himself through all the things he’d been through. He was finding something to be passionate about again, something to give him back a piece of himself that he’d felt like he’d lost. He loved skating as much as he had loved snowboarding and Reki would never take that away from him. It came to Langa as natural as breathing by now and that was something Reki could be jealous of, but he couldn’t blame Langa for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He couldn’t blame himself either, though, not really. Because that would make it better. If the fact of the matter was just that he hadn’t tried hard enough, hadn’t put in the hours practicing— if the truth was that he was a coward, that he scared easily and didn’t have the guts for this, well that was something he could face. More than that, it was something he could </span>
  <em>
    <span>fix</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He could put it more time practicing, he could study the other skaters with more dedication, he could work on facing his fears. If it was his fault, he could do something about it, could manage to close the gap between him and Langa, even if just marginally. But that wasn’t the truth. Reki loved skating, too. Reki had been skating for nearly as long as Langa had been snowboarding, He had put in </span>
  <em>
    <span>years</span>
  </em>
  <span>, numerous broken bones and a lot of sleepless nights. He had watched video after video online, studied all the top skaters at the S, he’d put in the work and even when he didn’t see progress as fast as he would have liked to, he put in </span>
  <em>
    <span>more work</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There wasn’t anything Reki could do that he hadn’t already been doing, There wasn’t anything that would allow him to catch back up to Langa.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And maybe that’s why it actually hurt so bad. Because the fact of the matter, the one Reki had been forced to face jump after jump after jump, that graffiti star an unattainable goal mocking him from just a few feet away, was that he and Langa weren’t the same. They weren’t in the same category, they weren’t the same skill level. And the gap between them was only going to grow wider. Because no matter how many times Reki made that same jump, no matter how many techniques he tried, he simply couldn’t reach any higher. And yet, it seemed like Langa got a little closer to the stars every time his feet touched his deck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Pretty soon Langa would be so far away that he’d be nothing but a brilliant speck of light for Reki to admire from afar. He’d be nothing but fond memories of a time Reki had found his best friend, the person who fit the edges of his soul with perfect ease. He would watch Langa rise in the ranks and he would think of these months they spent together, learning to speak each other’s language, to meet each other in the middle. He would remember Langa’s laugh, the way he would duck his head as if it could somehow hide the melodic sound. And then he would think about how he’d lost all of that, how it had been just enough to whet his appetite before it had been ripped away from him, forever leaving a Langa-shaped hole in his heart.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it was true that Langa hadn’t left Reki behind— </span>
  <em>
    <span>yet</span>
  </em>
  <span>. So far, Langa always came back for Reki, always glanced over his shoulder to make sure Reki was still there. Whenever he accomplished something new, Reki was the first person he showed, the approval he sought. But Reki had seen him skate against Adam, had seen the way he’d effortlessly flipped straight over Adam’s hug, like it was nothing. Like it was the only obvious thing he could have done. He saw the way Langa wanted more, craved for something further ahead of him. And if Reki was behind him already, there was no way he would ever be able to help Langa satisfy that craving. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was really only a matter of time before Langa left Reki behind.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or, it was a matter of time before Langa </span>
  <em>
    <span>should</span>
  </em>
  <span> leave Reki behind if he wanted to keep advancing and growing. Just as these feelings of bitterness had been weighing Reki down, he knew that he was starting to way Langa down. Langa could never get better if he kept skating with Reki, kept trying to match Reki’s pace instead of setting his own. He couldn’t develop his skill any further by Reki’s side and even though that cut, even though it hurt worse than every broken bone that Reki had ever had, stung worse than all of the road rash he’d acquired over the years, he didn’t want to be the reason Langa was stuck. Just like he didn’t want Langa to get hurt because of him, he didn’t want Langa to give up his potential, either. Langa was destined to shine and Reki was casting a shadow over his brilliant light.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So as much as it hurt, as terribly as it sucked— and it did, oh it </span>
  <em>
    <span>did</span>
  </em>
  <span>— Reki knew that he had to break free from Langa. He knew that he had to put the space between them, to sever the tie that Langa was using to drag him along. Because Langa was— well, he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>Langa</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was quiet, but genuinely interested in everything Reki had to say. He was soft spoken but the things he did say were brilliant. He added great insight. He was protective, fierce—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reki pulled his knees closer to his chest.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He needed to stop thinking like this. He needed to haul himself off the ground and finish dragging his sorry ass home. He needed to collapse, maybe pretend to be sick tomorrow so he could lay in bed all day. He needed to do </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span> because right now he was sitting in one spot, an easy target for all the emotions he had been trying so desperately to avoid. He didn’t think he could outrun them, not anymore, but he ought to at least </span>
  <em>
    <span>try</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Somewhere in the distance, the sound of water starts to shift. It takes Reki a few seconds to realize that he’s hearing more than just raindrops now, he’s hearing a set of footsteps in the puddles. He considers for a moment trying to get up now, but whichever other poor soul is out in this rain has already seen him and really, he still doesn’t have the will to do anything but stay exactly where he is. If he’s lucky, the person will just pass him right on by, biting back whatever questions they have for a young boy sitting in the rain with his head bowed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Reki.” The sound of Langa’s voice is almost enough to make Reki jump right out of his skin. “You’re going to get sick if you keep sitting there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So?” Reki manages to mumble, pressing his forehead firmer against his knees.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa sighs and Reki refuses to look up at him, refuses to see the way the lights are reflecting in his eyes, the way his longer hair curls gently at the back of his head. Reki refuses to look up and acknowledge that Langa had actually come after him in the end.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He refuses to look at Langa because if he does, he’ll say all the things he doesn’t want Langa to know.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t look at Langa, because if he does, he’ll tell Langa that he doesn’t want him to go, that he wants to keep skating with him for as long as Langa will let him. He’ll tell Langa that he misses him, even if he’s only two feet away. He’ll tell Langa all these things that will become a burden on Langa because he’s too gentle to leave Reki behind, even if he needs to. So it’s up to Reki to cut the ties for his sake and he can’t do that if he sees Langa standing over him in the rain.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Reki.” Langa repeats, but this time it’s so quiet, it’s almost drowned out by the rain entirely. When Reki doesn’t respond, doesn’t shift even a little bit, Langa steps closer, closer, closer and then he’s sitting down next to Reki, pressing his own back against the stone wall, his shoulder brushing Reki’s in the process.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, they just sit side by side like this, close enough that Reki can just feel the warmth of Langa’s skin despite the rain that still cascades down on them. They sit in the silence of the late night, no other people daring to be out in weather such as this. It’s almost peaceful, honestly, As peaceful as something can be when Reki is trying to nurse the jagged edges of a broken heart so they don’t get the chance to cut him any deeper.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reki thinks that Langa is leaving it up to him to talk, to start whatever conversation they’re supposed to be having, It’s a fair thing for Langa to do, considering that Reki is the one who walked away, the one who is clearly carrying some burden— a burden that he only allowed Langa to see a glimpse of. It’s only reasonable to assume that Reki would have more to say after that, but he really doesn’t.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Langa shifts next to him, turning so that he’s facing Reki. Reki still isn’t looking at him, but he can see Langa’s legs and feet as he moves and then suddenly there’s a warm hand on his shoulder and it’s enough to jolt Reki into at least lifting his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He really shouldn’t have because Langa looks just as broken as Reki feels, his wet hair falling limp around his face, the longer edges of his hair kissing his shoulders along with the raindrops. He looks like he’s in pain and Reki’s immediate reaction is to want to fix it, even though he’s the cause of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This really became quite the mess.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I want to skate with you.” Langa says after a moment, the words almost choked, as if he can barely get them out. “I want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>beat</span>
  </em>
  <span> Adam, but I want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>skate</span>
  </em>
  <span> with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And there really is a difference there, Reki knows. He can feel it in the way Langa emphasizes the words. Beating Adam, that’s a one time thing. But skating together? That’s— that’s everything. That’s daily, nightly, forever. That’s the exact thing that Reki has unintentionally fallen in love with. Skating together is laughing together, it’s continuing to speak each other’s language. Skating together means more of Langa’s hands as he bandages up Reki’s newest injury, more chances to watch Langa’s eyes light up as he masters something new. Skating together is continuing to bare their souls to each other, meeting each other in the middle.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa doesn’t want to compete with Reki, that’s what he’s saying. He wants to </span>
  <em>
    <span>share</span>
  </em>
  <span> this with Reki, for it to be something they both hold dear. Langa wants to surpass Adam and leave him in the dust, but he wants to keep Reki at his side. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re better than I am.” Reki responds feebly, glancing down to where Langa’s foot is almost touching his. “You should go on ahead.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For a moment, Langa seems to chew on his response, thinking of how to properly say whatever words are all jumbled up in his mind. Reki has seen him do it before and, apparently, if Langa gets his way, he’ll see him do it again in the future. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t skate to be good.” Langa finally says. “I skate to have fun. And I have fun skating with you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have fun skating with Adam, too.” Reki replies. He doesn’t want to say these words, doesn’t want to keep digging the knife deeper into his own heart, but he tries to anyways. “You can keep having fun skating with Adam because he’ll keep challenging you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s all Langa says before there’s a set of arms enveloping Reki, pulling him flush into Langa’s soaking wet body. Reki falls into him, his arms finally letting go of his legs as he allows himself a brief moment to just be held by Langa. And then, after a few seconds tick by, he wraps his own arms back around Langa, his hands fisting in the back of Langa’s shirt as he pulls him closer, pressing his face into Langa’s shoulder.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa’s hold is firm and unyielding as he buries his own face in the hair on top of Reki’s head. They don’t speak, not for a long time, but Langa’s always been good at hearing what’s inside Reki’s heart, even if Reki hasn’t tried putting it into words. And the longer he remains in Langa’s embrace, the more he realizes that he, too, can read into the depths of Langa’s heart. He can feel it in the way Langa smooths a hand down his back, the desperation for things to not end here. He can hear it in Langa’s rattling breaths, that he’s going to keep fighting for this, that he’s not going to just let Reki walk away again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry—“ Reki starts to say, but his apology is cut short by Langa pulling away from him. Not far— not far at all, in fact. He’s so close, his blue eyes sparkling in a way that Reki has never seen before. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Their arms are still wrapped around each other as their gazes lock and there seems to be something filling the air besides the rain suddenly. Reki tries to swallow, to form the rest of his apology, to explain to Langa that he’s just afraid of losing the one thing that matters to him more than anything else. He wants to tell Langa that losing him will hurt worse than losing his friend in the past and that he’s handled it completely the wrong way but his intentions were good and he just wanted Langa to </span>
  <em>
    <span>shine</span>
  </em>
  <span>—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But before any of the words can find their way past the lump in his throat, Langa is leaning in and Reki can’t do anything but lean in, too, his eyes fluttering as the feeling between them grows to an almost unbearable level. They’re close, so close, painfully </span>
  <em>
    <span>close</span>
  </em>
  <span>— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The wall of water that drenches them is somehow cold, despite the fact that they were both already dripping wet. Reki makes some sort of startled noise and shoots backwards, trying to brush his hair out of his face. Langa is in the same spot, arms out to the side as he tries to shake some of the extra water off, but there’s a smile on his face. The driver of the car that had drenched them yells some sort of apology out of their window before continuing onwards. Reki, too stunned to have any idea what to do, turns to Langa only to see his shoulders shaking with laughter.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then suddenly he’s laughing out loud, throwing his head back as he tucks his wet hair behind his ears and Reki finds that he’s laughing too. He’s laughing and his ribs and lungs are burning and it feels good and warm against the cold of the evening, it’s a balm against the storm of emotions that has only just started to be quelled inside of him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry,” He says to Langa again, after they’ve finally gotten their laughter back under control. He knows Langa doesn’t need an apology, but he deserves one. “I was just— feeling left behind and lonely.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Reki, I’ll never leave you behind.” Langa says with the same conviction that he had promised Reki that he wouldn’t give up skateboarding, even if he got seriously injured. He says it with so much feeling that Reki knows it’s more than a promise, it's a guarantee. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even though he still doesn’t like Langa going up against Adam again, even though he worries for Langa’s safety and still knows that he’s going to have bouts of loneliness as he tries desperately to close this gap between them, as he chases in Langa’s shadow, he knows that he’s going to have Langa by his side through it all. And maybe being lonely isn't terrible if he has someone to be lonely with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Reki stands up finally, tucking his skateboard under one arm and extending his other hand to Langa. “Whatever you say mister hot shot, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Snow</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Langa takes his hand with a dramatic roll of his eyes and allows Reki to haul him to his feet. “If you act like that, maybe I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> leave you behind.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe, Reki thinks as Langa falls in step next to him as they head towards his house together, an unspoken agreement to dry off passing between them, he won’t be lonely at all. </span>
</p>
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